Sick of California?

While the country’s cities and states are cutting employment benefits, Berkeley City Council members will decide Tuesday whether to set aside taxpayer dollars for city workers to get sex-change operations.

The vote, expected this evening, would permit the city to dole out $20,000 in cash stipends from its general budget to pay for the surgeries – even as a city auditor warns of ballooning employee benefits costs.

It would establish the Sex Reassignment Fund, a discretionary fund, in which individuals could get as much as $15,000 before their sex-change surgery and $5,000 post-surgery. The money will be available for city employees on a first-come, first-served basis to pay for one-time expenses.

A new City Manager's report states that the city has unfunded liabilities — including pension funds, workers' compensation and vacation payouts — totaling as much as $252 million. City auditor Anne Marie Hogan, who authored the report, cautioned that employee benefits for the city’s 1,500 workers represent a rapidly increasing cost to Berkeley and that measures must immediately be taken to lower these expenditures.